First up, my spirit name is Mnido Giizis Ogichidaa: A Moon Spirit Guardian.
And one of my fasts, I was given a message
that there's too many of our women's hearts on the ground.
and the death of a nation is when our women's hearts are on the ground.
And that shortly after that fast, I ended up speaking in the parliament of Canada,
debating the laws on sex work.
And I was in a room filled with politicians and lawyers
and everybody with fancy pieces of paper,
and I was there with my eagle feather.
And I was talking about
how 500 women to us,
is equivalent to 25,000 women in any other community.
If another community lost 25,000 women,
I'm sure people would be up in arms.
They would be organizing.
They would not sit down and live in silence.
Um, at Maggie's, our project is the first of its kind in our country.
And this is years after the Stolen Sisters report.
I want to acknowledge that 60% of the women found on the pig farm
were First Nations women.
That their families had to lobby the police to investigate their crimes.
Sex workers are mothers,
they're fathers,
they're brothers and sisters,
they're Two Spirit,
they have other things,
other than being a sex worker.
Sex work is their job.
It's not OK to kill a sex worker.
It's not OK to kill an Aboriginal woman
or Two spirited person.
Um, this is a drum we made at Maggie's,
it's the first time we did drum-making at Maggie's.
What we're trying to do with the project
is we're trying to open the circle
so that we can include people in our community
that don't feel part of our community;
so that we can take them out of isolation and include them in our circle.
So we're doing that by including them in the sex work community,
but also reaching out to community organizations
so that they can participate in community organizing,
and be OK with saying "Hi, I'm a sex worker".
Um, shame lives in silence.
That's been my experience.
If you wanna get rid of shame,
we have to start talking.
You know?
And it's, this is the remnants possibly of colonialism,
where we don't talk about sex,
let alone sex for money.
So I'm gonna end my speak by acknowledging the spirits that have gone on,
our mothers, the mothers, the daughters, the aunties.
That it wasn't because they were a sex worker
that they deserved to die.
They did not deserve to die.
They needed to be honoured,
they needed to be cherished,
they needed to be included in the circle.
So I'm going to sing a song,
the Seven Grandfather Teaching Song
on the drum that was made in our sex worker organization,
for the people who couldn't come here today
and speak to you about their stories and say "hi, I'm a sex worker".
And I'm hoping that it can, we can meet people where they are
instead of waiting til they're healed enough to be in a sweatlodge, or community circles,
and then maybe we won't have so many vigils.
[Song begins]
[others join singing]
[song ends with cheers]
Oh, thank you so much for that gift, Maurganne, that was beautiful.